


Between a Rock and a Hard Place

by skerb



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Ending, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Broken Bones, Burns, Character Death, Claustrophobia, Dark, Disintegration, Loneliness, Pain, Poor Sans (Undertale), Slow Death, Trapped, last minute hope, radiation poisoning, suffocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:40:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27572467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skerb/pseuds/skerb
Summary: Someone will find you, Sans. Someone has to.-Sans falls somewhere out of sight, literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. What he doesn't realise is that he's close to the CORE, which constantly emits radioactive energy....My collaboration withhj_skbfor the Zine "Lattices+Cracks", which is a 18+ Undertale fan zine focusing on the "main" 3 universe skeletons and how to break them. Filled with angst, sadness, horror, and thrills, you can find the entire compilation for FREE atthis link!!For other fics in this collective, you can see them all retweeted onLattices & Crackstwitter page!
Comments: 15
Kudos: 37





	Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The cruel grip of throbbing, ceaseless pain calls Sans back to consciousness. It lances up his spine from where he’s caught, wedged into a tight space and buried deep under the thoroughfare above. Rocks surround him, thrust into his side and under his legs to prop him up at an awkward angle. He’s scuffed and bruised, hanging heavily in the debris. When he opens his eyes, the stony shaft walls stare coldly at his face. With it being only a few inches away, Sans can detect the familiar scent of hot iron.

It takes awhile for his brain to string coherent thoughts together, namely since every word that enters his head is abruptly crossed out by the score of an invisible pen. It takes time. His body protests with every attempt to even gauge where he is. The rocks around him are sharp and wet, and a thick, cloying miasma in the air makes every breath raw and achy. His hoodie is caught on something higher up, forcing his arms into an awkward angle above him.

Eventually, his vision clears. He doesn’t remember being brought here, and he wouldn’t have been _this_ clumsy to get himself trapped. Or maybe he _had_ fallen, and this was just his luck. All he knows is that before this his heart and soul had been elated; he had been amongst the first to finally see the Surface after years, hell, _centuries_ of waiting.

Sans looks around and tries to correct his footing, finding his clothes torn and shredded. There’s an underlying pressure that ripples around and into his body, a constant, distant throb that gradually builds up the longer he focuses on it. And when he tries to move, it gets worse. So much worse. Panic coils up within him, ready to burst at a moment’s notice.

Far above him, there’s a crack hidden away. If that’s where he fell, it’s a wonder he didn’t break anything on the way down. Perhaps that’s why his shoulder aches as much as it does, the limb nearly pulled from the angle where he’d dropped. The floor below is unsure, patterned with milky-grey rough splotches, the sediment almost glowing with something underneath.

The air’s still too thick. Even though he’s hardly moving, he can’t seem to catch his breath. Not that skeletons need to breathe, but the energy required to keep going makes it difficult if there is too much or too little magic around. So there must be something wrong here because Sans’ breaths have started to catch, to burn, shivering out as each lights him up in pain.

And that distant throb around him only continues to worsen. Ok, nothing like waking up and not knowing where you are to instill a little panic, but something in the air that creates a shockwave of blistering pain is something else. Sans looks around a little more to survey how to get himself down before he falls and hurts himself further, but doesn’t find anything suitable to land on. His shoes just hang uselessly on his feet, his joints protesting under what feels like heavy gravity.

Then it dawns on him. His shortcuts, duh. Why didn’t he think of it sooner? It would’ve been a lot easier to manage had he not been blinking around stupidly as the atmosphere steadily ate at his reserves. He draws in his energy, wincing when the magic in his soul constricts. Then he suddenly stops when it whooshes out of him with an ugly pop.

The shortcut fails.

Dread settles in on him, and he tries again, his magic twisting. He’s pinned, wrestling in the space he’s trapped in. Every time, it pulls at something he didn’t know existed, branching out to pull at a thread from deep inside him as it slowly, agonisingly unravels.

He swears, sweating from the effort, the magic thin and sticky. The small droplets on his bones almost seem to boil, burning him with his own essence. The unsteady heat around him climbs, his clothes heavy and hot as it begins to swelter. As he peers at his tattered clothes, he only just realises that the plastic from his zipper looks shinier than it has in years, like it’s starting to melt. His soul clenches with fear when something sparks in the air, just outside of his periphery.

He knows this place -- or rather, he’s worked in areas like his before. Small tubes of gas and pockets of unstable magic wind around the Underground, creating dense pressure that needs to be ventilated to Hotland. Sometimes small fissures crack their way to the surface, but the safety committee monitors them at all times, tracking their movements before they reach civilization. After all, being near such a place would be dangerous, as the CORE constantly emits radical energy.

Sans swallows thickly as realisation crashes upon him like a brick upside the head. In their hurry to flock to the surface, to the barrier that was now broken, it’s likely that the lab technicians had abandoned their posts. There probably wouldn’t be anyone left to scan, and that beyond shutting down the CORE to minimal levels, no one would be monitoring it. Nobody would detect him.

Fear twists around inside him, fragile dreams of a better life topside quickly melting away to the fear of dying. For being a so-called nihilist, how had Sans convinced himself that he was allowed a shred of hope? He had actually believed that there would come a time where he could stare up at the night sky and see the real stars with his brother.

And now, unless someone found him fast, he wouldn’t be able to do any of that. He’d tasted freedom for only a moment before it had been cruelly ripped from him. Papyrus couldn’t know where he was. Would he just assume that Sans had gone ahead, too excited to wait?

Another wicked crackle stipples throughout his body. It feels too much like the sproutings of a flare-up, of the CORE tossing up effluent grime to the surface of its molten mantle. Its magic tends to fizzle out and sputter. He’s too close to its epicentre.

* * *

Over time, the shockwaves become more familiar. Sans’ breaths shudder, tight and heavy in his chest like they’re stuck there. It takes effort to push them out and to draw in the needed energy just to survive. Maybe if he’s lucky, it’ll only be a small flare and he can worm his way to the crack above.

Despite his wants, his joints ache like his limbs are going to pop out of their sockets. He can’t even muster the strength to twist his arm from his sleeve, even though the fabric steams and burns his bones. He huffs, exhausted.

He tries again. His knees ache when he pushes his back against the rocks. His entire body screams at him, his magic thin like dribbling egg whites. Gasping, Sans manages to wrestle his arm from one of his sleeves. The entire limb shudders as he brings it to his chest, exhausted and weak from his struggle. His legs scrape against the glowing rock and sediment, burned by the residue they leave behind. Sans is too slow to wipe it away as it inches into the bone, eating it away. The area is too cramped. He attempts another gulp, his soul pounding at the thought.

_No one knows I’m here._

His third and fourth attempts at shortcutting burn his soul, leaving his magic crackling like old defective wires. The world feels as though it’s going to swallow him whole, the ceiling too far and the walls crushing in.

Blindly, he throws his arm to the wall in an attempt to push it away. He claws upwards, vying for purchase to pull himself up and out of the awkward position. Despite his best efforts, all he earns himself are scraped and bleeding distals that peel up like spongy soft wood. Dust clots at the blood, making him nauseous from the sight. Sans can’t help the warbling, soft, and pitiful cry as he cradles his now-foaming and bubbling hand close to his chest.

_Don’t think about it. Don’t think about how you’re going to die. Someone will find you, Sans._

_Someone has to._

* * *

He knows that he shouldn’t, but tears gather at his eyes. He can’t afford to spare the magic, no matter how crushed and alone he feels. Who knows how long it’s been since he’s been trapped down here?

Did someone push him? He racks his mind to try to visualise who he might’ve pissed off to merit such torture, but his thoughts spin and curl into a massless ooze when he tries to put names to faces and memories to events.

Whoever it was… must’ve hated him big time.

Or maybe… it was an accident or a misunderstanding? Sans doesn’t know which of the two is more comfortable a thought. Perhaps it was a joke gone too far and he had slipped.

Maybe it’s easier to blame someone else for his hard luck. As much as he would’ve liked for an outlier to be responsible, he probably just tripped and fell all on his own.

He jolts when something nearby cracks. Is it distorted magic from the fissure or something else? Fear as well as a small hope swell within him. Maybe it’s someone who had seen him down here. Sans blinks back tears, wiping across his face so he can peer through the haze of steam and heat.

He stops when he catches a glimpse of soft grey powder trailed down his sleeve, blood smearing and clotting the dust to his clothes. _Fuck._ He doesn’t have time. It’s taken too long. His joints already feel swollen as they prickle with radical energy. He can’t defeat it. It’s not a fight where he has a chance of winning or cheating his way out. The CORE is too passive and doesn’t react to intent. He sobs under his breath, stuck in place. Wetness creeps down from his ankles to soak his socks, thick and slow like honey. He doesn’t have to look down to know that it’s blood.

The burn of the CORE’s energy flashes through his body with every pulse, flaking bits of his integrity with it. The radiation is so intense that it begins to burn his clothes away with bursts of heat. They’re fading, a former lustre of their normal appearance, tattered and torn as the thick and angry magic swirls around him. The energy peels up the tiny plates that make up his body, eroding the cartilage in between until he’s rendered weak and fragile.

It’s too agonising to focus on one area at a time. All he can manage is whimpering and, when he can’t take it anymore, choking off his screams. He flinches when the pulses amp up, twitching and trembling when his body starts to give out.

One shoe drops off, and with it, Sans gapes. He stares down at the stub at the end of his leg, his soul hammering furiously to keep him whole. He trembles in his effort not to fall apart as the magic in his knee crumbles like fine grit, drifting from the space. His leg loses its usual sheen, dulling to a dead and empty thing as the marrow inside broils into a fine mist. The end of it crumbles away, drifting to disappear below. All Sans can do is tilt his head back and try to think about happier times.

* * *

It takes a long time to die. His clothes are a shredded mess, but the CORE’s pulse has ebbed down to a merciful throb. Everything from the knees down is gone, his fingers chipped away and his pelvis partially eroded. His vertebrae are loose, like if Sans were to cough, they’d wriggle free. It’s a sickening feeling, but he can’t do anything.

Everything hurts. Everything burns. Every bone is scorched from the inside out. Everything that was once soft is now hardened and petrified.

He doesn’t even attempt to move. It’s not like he can. It feels like an age has gone by, wrapped up in the CORE’s embrace, thick and cloying like terrible perfume. The rocks are his friends now. His dreams are the small glowing pebbles embedded in front of his eyes.

He’s starting to lose it.

Over the hours, he glances up, hoping for someone to poke their head into the crag in the mountain where he’s lost and broken. And every time, Sans’ soul squeezes with loneliness when he realises that no one will ever find him.

What he wouldn’t give for at least one more chance to see his brother. He had looked so excited at the prospect of meeting the sun, of driving on long highways and seeing the sights. Now it hurts to think that Sans will never get to share that with him.

Ever since he had regained consciousness, there had been barely a sound but the ones he had made himself. Now, however, Sans hears the gentle rush of air and the sweltering of magma in the near distance.

There’s a creak. A brittle snap. Sans’ body lurches as his weight swings him forward, freed by his arm as it loosens from its broken socket. His skull cracks off the opposite wall and for one glorious moment, Sans sees something other than the dreary flats and shards of rock that surround him -- a bright wash of red.

Red. His brother’s scarf. Has Papyrus found him? 

No. It’s just blood. His blood. With a dull ache in his chest, Sans releases a bitter sob as the scatter of splintering bones hit the jagged rocks below. The movement jars his spine, misaligning the column of bone in their precarious stack. It topples, dropping him and a few ribs to join with the rest of his dust at the bottom of the cavern.

He closes his eyes. He can’t fight this anymore. His soul begins to chip and crack, giving up as his body follows suit. It’s almost a relief when the pain becomes distant even though Sans knows he’s dying. When he reopens his eyes, they barely focus on the red glove that reaches towards him as his bones turn to dust and disintegrate.

_Too late._

He gives up, the heat rendering his soul into shards and his body into fine silt. A cry from above poisons his last moments with brief hope before everything just stops.


End file.
